What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days?

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Welcome back to our weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which is, as you know, what a Stradivarius would sound like, had he worked in Play-Doh.

We rise first this morning to pay homage to two remarkable profiles in cowardice, both of which center themselves around the cats 'n kittens at This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs. The first is the fact that ABC, with full knowledge and malice aforethought, has decided to throw its brand into the bloody mud and stomp that sucker flat. The only possible reason for doing something so transcendently ghastly is that your network is nervous that it will be yelled at on the radio by crazy people. But this is beyond self-parody This is a move of such towering self-snark that any attempt to mock the hiring of Butcher Bill Kristol -- in 20-fking-14 -- is bound to be superfluous. It mocks itself. It mocks the dead.

The other, less-obvious poltroon was Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, and first runner-up in our most recent vice-presidental pageant. Ryan, who is considered an intellectual in a milieu in which Bill Kristol somehow stays employed, decided to be a charlatan on the issue of separation of powers this time around, and not on the subject of economics, on which he has made his reputation as a Thinker Of Big Thoughts and the Bill Kristol of the field.

RYAN: It's not the number of executive orders, it's the scope of the executive orders. It's the fact that he is actually contradicting law like in the health care case, or proposing new laws without going through congress, George, that's the issue.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you think he's violating the constitution?

RYAN: ...increasingly lawless presidency. We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of congress, writing new policies and new laws without going through congress. Presidents don't write laws, congress does. And when he does things like he did in health care, delaying mandates that the law said was supposed to occur when they were supposed to occur, that's not his job. The job of congress is to change laws if he doesn't like them, not the presidency. So...

Wow, pretty gutsy there, Junior. I have seen lawless presidencies. I have seen burglaries and hush money in the Oval. I have seen missiles sold to mullahs. But, let's assume, for the moment, and against all our better judgment, that you're not talking completely out of your ass again. There are remedies. And, good for you, Clinton Guy, for bringing them up.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But if you think he's lawless, circumventing the constitution, are you going to move to impeach?

RYAN: No, I'm not -- look, what we -- we have a difference of opinion, clearly, and -- and some of these are going to get fought out in court. You have some court challenges with respect to religious freedom going to the court this spring. But I am concerned about this trend, such as what he said at the State of the Union, that if Congress doesn't give me the law I want, I'm going to go do it myself. That's effectively what he said. That is not the way our constitution works. And by the way, when we get sworn in, whether it's a president or a congressman, you swear to uphold "The Constitution." And I think these executive orders are creating a dangerous trend which is contrary to "The Constitution."

The president is "lawless." He is acting contrary to the Constitution and in violation of his oath of office. If Ryan really believes this swill, then he has only one option, if he intends to keep his own oath to uphold the Constitution, and that is to begin impeachment proceedings forthwith. But he won't do that because he knows it's a political loser for his party, because it would mark him as Less Than Serious, and because he has plans for the future that don't include setting up his deck chair on the Lido deck of the S.S. Louie Gohmert. He wants to be able to use the scary words -- "lawless," "contrary to the Constitution" -- without taking them seriously enough to act on them. He is talking no other language except fluent Fund-Raising Letter. There is no bigger fake in public life than Paul Ryan and, yes, I think it's time again to consult Blog ethicist, Mr. Doyle Lonegan of New York City.

Let us move along to more conventional conventional wisdom. The distinguishing feature of this week's episode of Disco Dave's Disco Dance Party was the attempt to get the Good Ship Big Chicken off the bottom of the Parsippany River. As you might expect, the Dancin' Master took the lead.

GREGORY: Do you have a responsibility as a Democratto seek more Republican voices, to stand next to you to say let's be truly bipartisan about this, and let's make it very clear that all the shotsthat might it be taken at the governor, only are valid if they can establish that he ordered this? Otherwise, this thing can grind on and eat away at him politically.

If you're keeping score at home, the Dancin' Master has told you that there is nothing to the whole business in New Jersey unless Big Chicken personally stood athwart the toll booths on the George Washington Bridge and scattered tacks on the pavement. (I'm fairly sure someone would have noticed.) Otherwise...politics! It's Monday morning. Isn't it time for someone at NBC to apologize again?

And we conclude, as usual, over on CBS, where former Achaean embed Bob Schieffer had the week off, and the very cool-named Major Garrett was sitting in, and, for the panel segment, presiding over the comedy team of Gerson and Gergen, aka Sanctimony And Tedium, LLC. But first, Eric Cantor came by to point out that the Republicans do so have ideas, dammit, and they've had a lot of them for a very long time because Boehner won't clean out the back of the ideas fridge, damn lazy bastard.

CANTOR: Well, listen, well, first of all, let me talk about what's in it because we are going to deal with those preexisting conditions. We don't want them to go without coverage. We just deal with it in a way and provide high-risk pools so that we can limit the increase in cost for everybody else and do it in much more cost- effective manner. We say folks ought to have choice of their insurance companies, let them purchase across state lines, help bring down prices. Then we say, you know, we ought to have patient-centered care, not care dictated by Washington, which is why we want to promote health savings accounts. These are the kinds of things that are in our proposals.

"Health Savings Accounts" -- also known as Shit Out O'Luck policies -- have been in the Republican plan since the dawn of the Reagan Era. Hell, somewhere yesterday, Bill Frist felt the faint stirrings of the political comeback. They're a bad idea. They do not work, especially in a country with unemployment still nudging seven percent. People laugh at them. This is what Cantor has. He really should check the date on the Tupperware before he opens it.

Once we moved on to the panel, however, Gerson And Gergen fell immediately into their venerable comedy routine, "Who Went Nuts First?"

GERSON: Right. It's pathetic. Moving forward I think serious Republicans know this. They question the timing before the midterms. I think there are serious questions here. But as far as the 2016 election, that's probably the place you're going to get the real leadership on this issue, because it's a national political problem. You know, these primaries are going to be a test of how rational the Republican process is when it comes to immigration. On one side you have a primal scream, on the other side you have a political strategy. And it's going to be a test as it moves forward.

GERGEN: David, this is an issue in which it's not only whether you get a law passed, but whether you're seen as dragged kicking and screaming to pass the law, or whether you're actually in favor of it heart and soul. This is an issue in which the Republicans instead of sort of dancing back, need to be very aggressive. We need to solve this problem and let the White House, let the Democrats be the ones who are picking fights and slowing it down.

Who knew that the Republican base was made up primarily of primal screaming bigots who, yesterday, got their undergarments in a sheepshank because Coca Cola ran an ad that suggested that a patriotic song could be translated into other languages? How could this possibly have happened with sensible people like Michael Gerson and David Gergen in positions of power and influence? This is how Bill Kristol keeps getting hired, by the way.